The Gold Coast

All 770 seats in the soaring, powder blue La Ronde Room at Miami Beach's Fontainbleau (pronounced: fountain-blew) Hotel were filled with men in silk suits and women in mutation mink. Steak dinners were snapped up at $10 a plate; drink-hustling waiters peddled hooch by the bottle ("Ya might as well. Yer payin' for it"). Then the M.C. silenced the house with a simple announcement: "Direct from the bar of the Boom Boom Room [another Fontainbleau saloon] we bring you the vocalist, Frank Sinatra."

The sleekly barbered businessman at ringside nodded his approval ("Frankie's voice has cracked a little, but what the hell . . . so's mine"). He seemed unbothered by what the night with Sinatra was costing him. The sunburned blonde who shared his table dropped a bone to applaud, her diamonds glittering; she seemed bemused by what a night of Sinatra might be worth. Whatever the song --Willow Weep for Me, I've Got You Under My Skin, The Lady Is a Tramp--Frankie's unmatched showmanship, his sad, slow baritone, his baggy, bedroom eyes got the message across.

For his $35,000 a week, Lover Boy is making the La Ronde Room pay off. One of the warmest winters in Florida's history has the Gold Coast awash with well-heeled vacationers, so everybody follows the trend to ever more expensive entertainment. From the Roney Plaza near the foot of the beach, north past the Versailles, the Eden Roc, the Sherry Frontenac and the Americana, all the way to the spanking new Diplomat, the competition rages. Cadillacs crowd the highways; minks and white fox stoles topped by teetering hairdos fill ornate halls such as the Eden Roc's Pompeii Room, which looks (in Comic Joe E. Lewis' phrase) as if it had been "designed by Frank Lloyd Wrong." On the stages the big ones are there: Maurice Chevalier ($15,000 a week), Jack Benny ($20,000), Jimmy Durante ($15,000), Sammy Davis Jr. ($25,000), Judy Garland ($25,000). Miami's total talent budget for the 15-week season: well past $3,500,000.

Only the top names draw enough customers for a hotel to show an entertainment profit, but losses are simply chalked up to advertising costs. And most of the town's once thriving nightclubs have been reduced to strip joints.

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